Chapter 2

Rinoa hummed to herself as she wiped her hands on the rag lying next to her sink. She turned off the lights in the kitchen and walked into the living room where she saw a Ellone sitting in front of the TV, staring at an empty screen.

"Ellone?" Rinoa asked as she walked closer. Ellone was spellbound by the black screen which was completely vacant.

"What are you watching Ellone?" Rinoa asked, her voice beginning to tremble. "There’s nothing there."

Her voice came back calm and slow.

"Can’t you see it Rinoa? All the pretty places."

"Ellone?" Rinoa asked as she moved closer to the television. "I don’t see anything. There’s nothing there."

Silence.

"You’re scaring me." Rinoa said as she reached, trembling, over to the power button of the television. "Please, please it’s time for you to go to bed." Rinoa pressed the power button, intending to shut the television off, but to her surprise, it came on and burst into a cartoon.

Ellone finally drew her eyes away from the screen as though it ceased to interest her. She stared at Rinoa for a moment without blinking. Her eyes were like two dead beads in her head.

"You can play tomorrow." Rinoa promised as she reached over to take the controls from Ellone’s fingers. "Tomorrow you can play, with your friends."

Ellone’s face melted into a smile but her eyes did not change from their stagnant state.

"Promise?"

"I promise." Rinoa answered breathing a sigh of relief as Ellone got up from where she sat and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Rinoa tried to steady her hands as she reached down and turned the playstation off. She was about to collect the loose disks lying on the floor when she heard a voice behind her.

"Don’t touch them."

"Someone might step on them by accident, dear."

"Don’t," the sound came sharply, "touch them." She repeated.

Rinoa nodded obediently as she left the disks where they lay. She followed Ellone into the little girls’ bedroom where she crawled under the covers with the stuffed animals arranged neatly beside her.

"He talks to me sometimes, Rinny. From inside the machine." Ellone said earnestly to Rinoa. "He says that there’s going to be another one."

"Cloud said that?" Rinoa asked in good humor as she sat down beside her. "Did he tell you how to resurrect Aeris too?"

"He says that tomorrow will be a special day, Rinny." Ellone whispered. "Tomorrow the next one will come."

Rinoa nodded. "Then he’s right. Tomorrow you’re going to be ten years old. Go to sleep, dear."

"Will you sing to me, Rinoa?" Ellone asked. "Sing the one about the last night you’re with me."

Suddenly Rinoa felt terrified again.

"No ..no..not. . tonight," Rinoa stuttered. "I’m tired."

"Please?" Ellone begged, opening her eyes wide. "Please sing to me, just this once?"

"No, go to sleep." Rinoa answered quickly as she turned off the Winnie the Pooh light on the light stand. "Good night."

However as Rinoa walked toward the door, she could have sworn that Ellone muttered something. Something that sounded a lot like "bitch."

*******

"I have so many dreams, Squall. So many places I want to go, so much that I think I’ll be happy doing. Don’t you get confused sometimes? And you wish someone would just pick a path for you?"

Squall sighed as he looked over at Seifer who lounged about lazily in the warm May sunlight. In front of them was the great library of Columbia university, the names of all the great dead philosophers carved on its facade and as Quistis had pointed out - not one of them women.

"I don’t know." Squall answered. "I think I’ll pass on the subject."

He felt Seifer jab him in his rib.

"You always say that. Say something new for once."

"Alright, alright." Squall agreed uneasily. "I want to do something where I’m taking care of people. You know, making sure that no one gets hurt. I sound like an idiot don’t I?"

"Yes you do." Seifer chuckled but grew seriously suddenly.

"Let him go."

What? Squall wondered as he suddenly felt the flower petals brush by his hand. He was at the university no more. Seifer was standing there in front of him but this time it was no gunman his was pointing his pistol. It was at Squall. The air around them filled with a hurricane of feathers and rose petal.

"Let it go."

"Seifer!" Squall yelled. "What are you doing?"

Do you want to die today, kid?

"Let it go, Leonhart. You’ll never be as good as I am. Let it go!"

"Seifer!" Squall hollered .Right then he heard a clap of thunder and there was an explosive pain in between his eyes. Blood splattered everywhere, onto the floor, on his hands. He collapsed to knees as he saw Seifer smirking over him.

"It’s your turn to die."

Squall woke up with a jolt. He was breathing hard. Fumbling about, he saw the red letters of his clock read 4:30 am. He stumbled into his bathroom and splashed his face with a handful of cold stale water. As he found his way back into his bedroom, he found himself staring out the window at the perpetual lights of the insomniac’s city.

Will you ever forgive me, Seifer? Squall wondered. It was then that the transparent case of the video game caught his eye. For a moment he did not see a giant yellow bird on the cover but a complete blank. It must have been a trick of his exhausted eyes.

The series ended at seven.

Somehow at that moment, it bothered him. What happens after seven? And no matter how much he tried, he could not fall asleep again.

*******

The party was just as he had expected. The living room was littered with bobbing balloons. There was a bright glitzy table cloth set out with a picture of Mickey Mouse holding a top hat on it. There were a group of kids sitting at the table eating snacks while another was content to wander about the house. He realized that Rinoa was probably in the kitchen still making preparations as Ellone sat by herself on the couch, in front the television. She paused the game as he came near.

"You’re not wearing your jacket." She said, disappointed.

"That was a special occasion." He told her as he stood there beside her.

"You can sit down if you want." She said nonchalantly. "I’m sure Zell and Selphie won’t mind moving."

Squall glanced down at the two stuffed animals sitting beside her, propped up so that they could both see the screen.

"Which one’s Zell and which one is Selphie?" Squall asked.

"The bear in the blue shirt is Zell." Ellone answered as she picked them both up and sat them carefully onto the floor. " And the one that looks like a Pikachu is Selphie. But she’s not a Pikachu so don’t call her that."

"I see." Squall answered as he sat down beside her.

"Is that for me?" Ellone asked as she glanced at the wrapped package in his hand. He handed it to her and she set it by her side. It appeared that no words were necessary in the exchange. Ellone went back to playing her game.

"Do you think Rinoa is a witch, Squall?" Ellone asked without looking up.

"No. Who said that?" Squall asked somewhat harshly.

She shrugged.

"The man said that last night. The man Rinny used to take home."

Squall shook his head as he could hardly begin to imagine who Rinoa had over recently. "No, Rinoa is not a witch. My secretary Edea on the other hand, she can be a witch sometimes about my style of dressing."

Ellone smiled.

"You’re a good guy."

"Not too many people think that."

"Watch." Ellone said as she pointed to the screen.

Squall looked up as he saw a silver haired man fall from the sky to impale a girl on a long sword. He frowned at the scene.

"Are all these games so violent?"

"If you want to be a good guy, don’t impale the heroine." Ellone said as though she was imparting important wisdom onto him. "Only bad guys do that. Then you have to fight them to finish the game, no matter how charming they seemed at the beginning."

"I see." He answered absently.

"Someone should kidnap Gore and make him shut up." Rinoa proclaimed from the kitchen as she tossed the Times onto the coffee table. She turned red suddenly as she realized that Squall was in the room.

"I . .I didn’t realize that . ..we had company." She stuttered as she gestured for him to follow her.

"Did you ever consider that the one stalking you might be a fierce Democrat?" He asked her as he leaned against the door of her kitchen.

She tossed her apron aside as she sat down at the kitchen table. "I’m afraid." She whispered as she began to wipe the sides of her eyes. "Squall, I’m so scared."

He pulled out a chair and sat down beside her.

"What’s the matter?" He asked in a concerned tone.

"It’s Ellone. There’s something wrong with her. Do you sense it when you’re with her? She’s not normal. And she hears voices . . . not those voices. She’s not a schizo. She has powers, Squall. Seifer knew that she had powers and he was always interested in her."

"Rinoa." Squall began as he didn’t know where to start.

"I know, you don’t believe me." She answered as she wiped her tears away with a crumpled tissue. "But tell me when you’re with her, aren’t you scared?"

"You wanted me to meet her last night because you wanted to see if she would frighten me?" He asked less calmly then he had intended.

"Yes." Rinoa answered, in a hushed voice as though she was afraid they were being overheard. "You were. I could tell by the look on your face when you told her your name. You knew there was something spooky about her."

"These powers-"

"She never shows them to me." Rinoa answered as she began to tear the tissue to shreds in her nervous fingers. "She showed them to Seifer though, only to Seifer. That was a long time ago, she was only six then and she could already induce illusions, change matter. I don’t want to imagine what she can do now."

"You think Seifer is stalking you because he wants Ellone?"

"Why do you say it like you don’t believe me?" She asked desperately. "Do you think I’m insane?"

"Rinoa." Squall pleaded. "Calm-"

"I’m not insane!" She insisted. "I’m-"

Rinoa stopped in mid sentence. Something in the living room had exploded.

********

"It’s like she just disappeared." Squall muttered to himself as he watched Rinoa send the last of the children home with their parents. It was amazing how calm she was through all of this as she begged him not to call the police. Having been on the force for a handful of years himself, he doubted if they could be of any help. Six eye witnesses had claimed that she had simply vanished into thin air.

Rinoa collapsed on the couch after she had closed the door on the last child.

"Do you believe me now?" She asked, in a quiet serene voice as is characteristic of someone in a state of shock. "How would your logic explain any of this? What are you going to do? Call it a kidnaping?" She demanded.

Squall looked at the ground where the disks were scattered.

"She wanted the series to go on, so badly didn’t she?" Squall asked in a tone that was on the verge of breaking.

"What?" Rinoa asked in a harsh bitter tone.

With a trembling hand, Squall reached down where his gift to Ellone laid. The wrapping lay in shreds around the thick case.

"This." Squall choked out as he brought the case onto the couch where Rinoa could see it. She stopped breathing as she laid her eyes on it.

"Final Fantasy Eight." Squall whispered as he read the words written in elongated Times New Roman on the cover. "She finally got her eighth fantasy."

However before either of them could say another word, the cover rippled like the surface of a pond after a pebble had been thrown in. When the layer cleared it was a picture of Seifer, standing alone facing the right with only a profile of his face visible. There was a cross behind him, the symbol of a renaissance knight.

There was complete silence for what seemed like an eternity before Rinoa spoke up.

"What do we do now?"

"Play the game." Squall responded.

She did not protest as he cracked open the case and drew out disk one. It clicked into place in the console and Squall closed the lid of the machine. He tossed Rinoa a control but to this she protested.

"These usually aren’t two player games."

"We’ll find out." He responded.

He turned the machine on.